Your Health is worthwhile
Conventional medicine offers little more to address women's health issues than birth control, antidepressants, and pain medication.
In the vast majority of cases, not only does this fail to make a woman feel truly well, but it fails even to begin to try and understand WHY she is having health issues.
The sad, if not scary, truth is there is very little research or resources going into understanding female-specific health issues such as PMS, PCOS, PMDD [premenstrual dysphoric disorder: where you get really depressed/anxious/sad before your period], menstrual migraines, painful or irregular periods.
Fortunately, Functional medicine works to find these answers and to provide solutions that resolve the underlying drivers of women's health-specific issues. We support women to not merely bandaid their health issues, but to have the hope to feel fully alive, well, and vital!
We look forward to hearing from you!
InHealthRVA would be delighted to help you address your health concerns and support your long-term wellness. A premier Functional Medicine and integrative health center in Virginia, we are committed to serving our community and providing the highest level of care available.
Our Focus Areas
Female Fertility: From Preconception through Pregnancy and Postpartum
Fertility is a complex biological state, one that modern science does not even fully understand. And what contributes to our fertility is also what creates a healthy pregnancy and postpartum period. We don't just want to simply get pregnant, but to hold the pregnancy, have a nourishing gestational environment for our baby, and rebound healthfully in the postpartum period.
How do we do this? By nourishing our bodies as a whole. Our bodies do not operate as independent units, but as a complex, orchestrated symphony of chemical signaling, carefully coordinated with all the other parts. When a few trombones and a couple of clarinets are not playing in sync, the whole symphony is disrupted. Whether you and your partner choose to use fertility assistance or not, optimizing your health as a whole will help ensure the best possible outcomes for your pregnancy, postpartum period, and overall health of your baby and you.
General Women's Hormonal Health
Fatigue, mood, energy, metabolism, libido, fertility, PMS, PCOS, cramps, skin health, cognition, aging, appetite, inflammation, vigor, and stamina...there is little about you that is not significantly impacted by the balance of your hormones.
Your body works hard every second of the day to buffer life and keep you within functioning physical parameters to stay alive. How does it do this? One of your body's central chemical systems responsible for this is your endocrine system or the complex network of hormonal signaling. Your hormones play a massive role in your energy, mood, brain function, appetite and metabolism, libido, and pain.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Modern medicine does not include teaching doctors about the female hormone cycle and how to support its health.
In conventional medicine, health care fails to investigate or address the underlying drivers of women’s health issues. And treatment options are limited to covering up or “bandaid-ing” symptoms with birth control pills, IUD’s, antidepressants, pain medication and invasive surgical procedures.
The truth is, medical research has not spent much time trying to understand how and why issues such as PMS, PCOS, PMDD, menstrual migraines, irregular periods or infertility occur. If you manage to get your doctor to investigate further, they will only be looking for overt diseases such as Cushings disease or ovarian failure.
Also, women are led to believe that feeling terrible around your period is just a ‘normal’ part of being female. But they are not. Painful, irregular, mood-disrupting menses are signs of underlying dysfunction that often can be addressed through a Functional medicine approach.
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Functional Medicine differs from conventional medicine because we seek to understand and resolve the underlying drivers of women's health-specific issues. We do this through more advanced testing that looks at more details of your hormone cycles as well as tests and treatments to identify and eliminate drivers of hormone-related health problems such as inflammation, gut dysregulation, stressors, metabolic syndrome, diet & lifestyle, toxins and nutrient imbalances.
Functional medicine uses the best of all medical worlds to help you optimize your hormonal and overall health. As part of your healing journey, this may mean prescriptions to deal with current symptoms along with herbal and natural protocols and diet and lifestyle guidance to address underlying causes so you have the best chance possible to either be free of the need of prescriptions, or at least to feel as good as possible on the least medicine possible.
A big part of the Functional medicine approach to women’s health is also education. Unfortunately, very few of us are taught about our hormone patterns. Not only can we test a woman’s hormone cycle in full throughout the month to identify dysregulation, we educate you to know what is going on at each part of your cycle and how to empower you to know how to balance expectations of your energy and mood based on normal hormonal fluctuations.
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Fertility, healthy pregnancies, babies and postpartum periods are best supported when our body is healthy and our hormone cycles are balanced. If a healthy pregnancy and postpartum period are your goal, then the focus starts with a healthy you. This is different from the conventional approach which barely looks at hormonal health or your health and simply prescribes hormones to try and force a pregnancy.
The Functional medicine process supports your hormone and whole-body health by combining advanced testing along with listening to your complete health history. Combining this information, we are able to walk with you on your health and fertility journey to optimize your health and the chances of your getting and maintaining a healthy pregnancy.
Functional medicine also understands that your fertility journey does not end as soon as you get pregnant. Our goal is to also optimize metrics and signs of your health after pregnancy and in the postpartum years.
Functional medicine also pays attention to male health when it comes to fertility. Issues such as inflammation, blood sugar and hormone imbalances, stress and diet can play significant roles in healthy sperm quality and potential fertility.
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Hormone health can feel like everything since hormones can affect mood, inflammation, energy, metabolism and libido.
Women’s unique female hormone levels and fluctuations mean that inflammation and brain function are impacted much more significantly than men. In fact, upwards of 80% of all autoimmune diseases are in women and most women who deal with any type of inflammation will tell you their symptoms are worse either/both just before or around their period and/or around ovulation during sharp hormonal changes.
While this may make us want to hyperfocus on fixing our hormones, it is important to realize that hormones are a sort of “middle-(wo)man” of human health. While hormone imbalances can drive a lot of our symptoms, often, it is other issues that are driving hormone imbalances.
For example, it may be low thyroid hormone that is driving your fatigue, weight gain, depression, dry skin and constipation. But it could be your imbalanced gut, inflammatory diet, high stress and nutrient insufficiencies that are causing your thyroid to be off. Healing your hormones means healing all the things that are messing up your hormones!
Functional medicine understands that hormone imbalances are part of our body’s interconnected system, and works to identify and heal integratively.
